


Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines (Promise to Return Remix)

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Kara fly CAP. Set after Demetrius/"Faith".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines (Promise to Return Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Calling Out in the Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/102871) by [scifiaddict86](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifiaddict86/pseuds/scifiaddict86). 



Flying isn't so automatic to him yet. He knows it'll come from experience, and that he shouldn't expect to be perfect -- he was reminded so many times those six weeks, people trying to be easygoing and reverent, telling him he wouldn't be Half the Pilot His Wife Was before handing him a beer. He's stopped having the waking nightmares where some switch goes off and he freezes up, takes off the safety, shoots for the wrong team. He times his breaths and tries to recapture the calm he felt on the baseship; as twisted as it sounds, that Eight dying in his arms was the first time in months he felt like everything was shifting into place, when he could almost think _I'm a Cylon_ and also _I am Samuel T. Anders_ in the same brain, while his mouth was saying _it's gonna be okay_. The feeling died almost immediately, _we're so frakked_ slipping back into the dead spaces, but it's quieter now, easier to manage. He steadies his plane for the routine CAP, double-checks his monitor. It only shows friendlies and the unarmed rebel baseship looming nearby.

"Longshot here," he calls. He's knows he's too loud, or he needs to adjust his volume, or both. The scratchier responses tell him he's flying with Hot Dog and, with a pause that lingers just a second and then a forced lightness in her voice, _Starbuck._

\----------

He has a pretty good head for names; at least once people tell him, he remembers. It always worked for him: nicknames, team numbers, most of their stats. Major league pyramid and anyone worth remembering from the minors and colleges. It's not that he's even that competitive -- but obviously it helps to be winning -- it's just a gift of his. Barolay called him a computer, back in the world. For a stiff-shouldered jock, she said, he's got a memory like a machine. This isn't a joke she makes anymore once they're running from them. She doesn't make a lot of jokes, period. Barolay's eyes are steel now.

It's something that Sam hangs onto, though. He's probably shouted out a command to every man and woman in the resistance at some point. The sheer number of people in the fleet, then on New Caprica, takes time to get used to. It's tens of thousands. Sam didn't realize until now how accustomed he'd gotten to _literally_ knowing every soul who might be alive back on Caprica. He knew them all. The world beyond him is a miracle, of course, and yet it's weeks before his chest stops tightening at the sight of a strange face.

He makes an effort to create groups again, pack humanity down into a smaller size. One group becomes their couple friends. Cally and Chief (Kara still calls him this), Greg and Jenny, Duck and Nora who are practically hitched. They settle in the same tent city and they work and drink together. A lot of the old military types get enlisted into the New Caprica workforce, alongside the tougher civilians -- and by now, no civilian is exactly weak anymore. It's not that they _believe_ the war is over right away. No one wants to be the naive ants from the story who march right into their deaths. But secretly, Sam can't shake from his mind the shrugging apathy of Cavil's surrender, or the trembling, joyful earnestness in the eyes of those two skinjobs who spared him. He sure as hell doesn't fight when Kara takes her leave and lets her hair grow longer and free, talks about getting a "real job" even though she's always been fired from those. Or that morning when she crawled under the table and tapped him awake, and his head was pounding so much from the hangover he wasn't sure he was hearing her right. "Let's get married," she said with strangely intense eyes and a hesitant lilt in her voice. He turned over and laughed tiredly. "Mmm what, right now?"

"Yeah," said Kara, like she thought she was making it obvious, and he was more certain of loving her than he'd ever been about anything. He could break down the world to just the two of them. "Right now."

\----------

 _Baby, talk to me before I fall asleep._

He got her a paint set; it was 'cause of something Helo said. The shop selling it was meant for kids or budding artists who dreamt of rebuilding colonial culture. "Sweetest husband," she said, and wrapped her arms over his shoulders, planted a kiss and then rolled her eyes. "Don't know what the hell's gonna _inspire_ me, though."

"Apocalypse?" he suggested. "Harsh landscape? Fight for survival? Epic love?"

She only ever made a few, abstracts mostly. She painted a wing on his arm when they were laying in bed together. "I like it," he said. He added, only half-teasing, "This is gonna be my tattoo, right?"

She grinned. "Don't joke about it, Sam, I'll do it." She sketched them as a joined object. The real artist made them more symmetrical than hers, but they locked together anyway. The part he remembers is that it stung more than either of them owned up to, and that he'd focused on her voice. They'd sometimes tell each other stories at night where they were always the heroes, surrounded by a supporting cast of lovable idiots, drunks, and amateurs. Even the less noble exploits, the broken limbs and dislocated shoulders trying to pull some teenage stunt or another, took on an air of legend in the dark.

They confiscated some of her paintings later, the Cylons and NCP. He came home one night and they were missing. He didn't know why, and he never got them back, and he never saw her paint again until she was wild-eyed on the Demetrius. The walls were covered with them, and that son of a bitch Leoben had his hand on her waist.

Feeling his way in the Viper, he can't think of the last time he heard her speak without seeing her. She sings out on the radio, boredly -- _Baby, talk to me before I fall asleep_ , and the intimacy of it is so surprising it pains him. He searches for his voice, the volume no longer in him. He tells her finally, "I just saw Galen and Nicky."

\----------

Of the marrieds, Cally's the first to get pregnant -- no one does the math around their wedding or anything, it just seems to be that time for them all at once. It's late enough now that she's getting huge, and Nora can't contain her wistful envy when she feels the boy kick with both hands. For Sam, it's only late in the night, probably too late, that he ventures to examine the sonogram picture and feel her stomach. He doesn't want to be intrusive; it's Cally herself who sees his reluctant face and grabs his hand firmly. "See?" she says, glowing.

They've taken to pooling their food together to get through the shortage, their makeshift family of neighbors and older friends. Seelix and Jean come by from the block over. Between the lot of them they've had some good meals going. "Raise your frakkin' hand if you voted for Baltar first," Chief says, rubbing his beard. "They ought to get less."

"Ha ha," said Rachel flatly, though he was flashing his best just-kidding smile in her direction. Nobody's faulted for having hopes this cold-ass planet couldn't live up to. Sam had been a little _preoccupied_ during the election himself, so it's not like he can talk either. He realizes Kara is strangely quiet that night, for her anyway.

"I saw that look," she tells him later. "You just better not start poking holes in condoms, okay? It's a limited supply, Sam; that's just wasteful."

He exhales, almost relieved. "Last thing on my mind," he assures her.

"So, what?" Kara asks, still searching him with the casual suspicion and leeriness of a prison interrogator. "Just rekindling memories of your nephews or nieces...?"

"Nope. Only child." It seems frakking scary to him, the sudden realization that they can be married without ever having such a basic conversation -- sisters, brothers, pets. He barely knew a thing about her childhood 'til that sudden conversation a few days before they were married, he realizes. Then just as quickly he chalks it up to the new world, where almost everyone's family is past tense. On Caprica, he would think sometimes about how he only knew her for three days and mourned for weeks longer. At seven months he realizes: of the time they've known each other, they've been married longer than they weren't.

"Same here," Kara continues, about the siblings, as if surprised herself at the common ground. "Guess mom and dad screwed up enough the first time." She jokes like this about her parents a lot, a self-directed bitterness on the edge of it.

"I do think if you want kids..." Sam says then without thinking. "I mean, it's not something to blow off. This place... at least it's not Galactica. It wouldn't be the worst thing."

She shakes her head, scoffing. "Yeah, Sam, it would."

"Nah, you'd be good at it. We'd be good, right? Keep the human race kicking."

She pauses a long time, too long. "You know, that frakker in the farm, Sam..." she says, taking in a breath and trailing off. Then she soldiers on. "He, um. He said all this crap about how I'm more useful as a baby maker than a pilot. You know, between the mind games and the drugs and the medical rape, we had some real fun conversations."

Sam is grimacing. "I didn't -- Kara, that's not fair. I didn't say that."

"That's not _fair?_ " she laughs, a hollow noise. "This is about you, still?" She looks away, walking faster now. "No, what am I saying, of course it is. You got the crazy wife."

He reaches to touch her but doesn't, his hand hanging limply instead. Her face is tense, resentful and guilty at once, avoiding his eyes. "Yeah, well," he says, "I'm leaving you for Cally. I think we'll be really happy."

"Frak you." Kara smiles just slightly.

"It's something we've secretly wanted a while. You know, Cally and me. A lot less crazy, a lot more pregnant."

"And Chief's gonna beat your ass when I'm finished." She tugs at his sleeve, drawing them a fraction closer again. "You know, I'm starting to think Cally can do better than you. You might wanna rethink this plan."

"I guess I could lower my standards," he agrees, and swoops Kara into his arms with sudden mock-realization. "Oh _heyyy!_ " he shouts. She knees him in the leg, roughly but not too painfulyl, her eyes squinted now with faux childlike rage as she smiles. She knocks his knitted cap off so the flakes of snow fall on his hair for the rest of the way home.

"That hat looked stupid."

He'll blame her later -- not for _real_ , but enough that he feels like crap when he sees the hurt in her eyes -- for the fever. It comes on overnight, stomach pains and dizzy vision, and he tries to ignore it as long as he can stand, playing pyramid out in the cold when he thinks he's "better" enough. Because it's just like last time, he wants to tell her. When the doc messed with their anti-rad meds on Caprica, and they _had_ to keep moving. But back in the tent he feels ill again.

"I am a moron," he murmurs.

"No," she says, kissing him. "You're okay. You got me." She's stroking his arm, and he reaches up and threads his fingers with hers. "Cottle'll be here soon," she says, starting to relax. "You need me to make you something? You want some soup?"

Everything is about to happen again.

\----------

 _Baby, talk to me before I fall asleep._

"Nicky kept looking around like he wasn't sure what the heck was going on," Sam says. He doesn't tell her everything. He wants to say that Galen's shaved his head since they left; does she know that? That he's harder, distant, alternates between not speaking about Cally and sickly fixated on her death. Was it him? Did she know? That kind of thing. The chronology of events makes no sense: when she stopped taking her pills, when she attacked him, when she left Nicky.

"Just stop," Tory said with exasperated grief. She was there too. They all were, and he can't tell Kara this. Tory was saying, "You had a concussion. You don't know what she saw. You don't even know what you saw." Galen's starting to let it go, he promises that. He's on a kick about Baltar being right, about symmetry and meaning all that bullshit; he just doesn't get what a joke it is.

 _Poor kid,_ says Kara, still talking about Nicky. _We should go see him._

She never wanted to see Nicky at first. It's not the stuff about her hating kids anymore; Sam knows she doesn't hate them, really. She gets to love them too much, Hera and Nicky, because there was Kacey before them, who she called her daughter once and then checked out of their marriage so she wouldn't have to talk about her.

Kara was already missing when Nicky was born. Sam couldn't force himself to believe she was safe and in hiding. All the problems they'd had, all the times she'd called him an idiot and meant it, he knew her well enough by now to know she'd have come back for him. When they were back in shared bunks on Galactica, scarred but alive, he tried to broach the subject once. They'd made it out okay, nearly all their old friends had, and maybe the kid would make her feel better. Kara only said, "I'm not in that place now. Okay?" and he nodded. He moved to put his arms around her, and she cringed in a way that made him pull back immediately. "Sorry," he said in a frustrated groan. Then, "Talk to me, baby." She was in front of him and so far away.

 _It's weird not having Cally around_ , he hears on the radio. _She was always there._

He's gotten so used to losing people, all the ways you're not supposed to. Barolay turned and spoke and then she was already gone; he didn't even get the catharsis of losing her in his arms. Mathias died outside the ship. He'd hear secondhand, thirdhand from a mission when someone hadn't come back, and he'd never understand that part of Kara's world. They come home and Galen's been demoted, and Cally's gone. Suicide. It's been longer than Sam can remember since a real suicide, not for a bombing or something like that, but he doesn't say this. Kara was almost logged as a suicide, someone told him. It was amended to "accident" or "pilot error," which he couldn't imagine her making. There was no body. Even then, a part of him knew the truth: the world had gone very strange and wrong, and it needed to right itself.

He can't count on anyone always being there. He didn't think he did, until Kara, who's always disappearing and coming back.

\----------

There aren't any weapons in the temple where the Tyrols celebrate the birth, or Sam doesn't think so, anyway. Maybe they're everywhere now. Duck's not there, still grieving, and Jammer's been MIA. It's with very little ceremony and not a lot of thought that they ask Sam to be a godparent. There's still a faint, delusional hope Kara will be out of detention soon, if that's where she is.

There are skinjobs there too, a Six and a Four dressed in unnervingly casual sweaters, the Six's hair done up in curls. Sam thinks he sees them stiffen slightly at the number of people in the room, like maybe they're scared; he lets himself feel pride in this. But there are bulletheads behind them and their calm returns. "We didn't want to do this in your temple," the male reassures them -- he's not their medic from Caprica, far as Sam can tell -- but they do it anyway, claiming a tight schedule. Cally keeps Nicky tightly in her arms, and he barely fusses when they swab his mouth gently with cotton, deposit the sample into a plastic bag. It takes less than twenty seconds.

"I'm sorry if this was an inconvenience," the Six says afterwards, her eyebrows arched in careful sympathy. She gives a generous smile to the infant, looks as if she's on the brink of touching him but doesn't quite come that close. "He's a beautiful little boy." Cally doesn't dare look her in the face and Sam knows it's almost definitely _herself_ she's afraid of. The skinjob turns to the rest of them suddenly, still smiling but glancing with precision across every face in the room. "And I assume we've already been to all of you?" It's nothing to be afraid of -- they must think of it like a census, their own peculiar way of keeping records. (Rumors have spread about experimentation, but the other, more accurate rumor is forensics. "Planet's a prison," said Barolay. "They need everyone's fingerprint.")

When they ask Sam for his name, he hears himself say, "John Wheeler." It's spontaneous, not a thought-out plan, and he sees Cally's body tighten across the room without moving, the silent glare of her eyes. He's not sure what to do if they've got a way to _check._

Next to him, Barolay follows his lead without hesitation, before the skinjobs even prompt her. "Sue-Shaun Jones."

"Greg Lahiri," says Greg with a slight twitch. "My wife Jenny." She nods too much, wordlessly, staring at the ground.

After they leave, Cally says nothing, only starts feeding her baby and staring pointedly at her husband. He glances from her to Sam a few times and finally mutters, "Don't be stupid, all right?" But he sees him concealing a smile.

\----------

"I... saw things," Sam says. "On the baseship, it's like I understood things, about me- about us, I think."

The others, save Tory, are not that interested. It could be he hasn't made much sense since he came back, and what he does say is vague and hard to articulate. Nicky plays in his crib, occasionally raising his head at the sound of another voice that's not his mother, then returns to his blocks, hitting them together without emotion.

"Do you need...?" he says, looking over at Tyrol again in whatever kind of solace he can give.

"What, a bullet in his leg? No, frak your help, you've done enough."

"Colonel," sighs Tory, more defensive than Sam even wants, more than he deserves. "It's only the four of us," she says. "We're in this together, nobody else-"

"And we don't need to bring any more frakking attention to ourselves!" Tigh snaps, but even his outrage seems forced at the moment.

"I'm out," Sam says quietly. "I'm out of this. I can't, I'm tired."

Chief pops his head up again, a familiar amusement and empathy on his face for just a moment. "You're _out_ of... being a Cylon?"

"That's ridiculous," Tigh grumbles.

"No, I think it's awesome," Chief says with a mini-salute. "Go ahead, buddy."

He shakes his head but doesn't leave. They just keep going over it, when it's not about Gaeta, it's Cally and whether she knew. She was his _wife_ , they all agree. She could have sensed it, she could have hated him for it, and for the fact he lied. (Sam pushes the thought from his head over and over. _If I found out you were a Cylon, I'd put a bullet between your eyes._ )

"We don't have a relationship like you and Cally," Sam says to Galen later, hanging behind after the others leave. He adds an uncomfortable "...did" to the end, unnecessarily. "We don't live together anymore," he tries to explain. "Even on the Demetrius, we weren't-- she's not really _with_ me all the time, you know? And when she _is_ near me, she's... she's going through her own..."

"Listen," Chief says, looking him at once in the eyes. "Sam. I don't care." There's no malice in it. It's almost sadness. Sam says nothing after that, only shakes his head and twists his hands together. _Okay,_ he thinks. He says the words to himself again. _Okay._ He is a Cylon. He is Samuel T. Anders. They're so frakked and it's gonna be okay.

\----------

 _Baby, talk to me before I fall asleep._

"I miss her, too," says Sam. Hot Dog offers a halting _Yeah,_ and they go silent at the downbeat turn of the conversation. Kara starts to tell stories about the old gang from New Caprica, _civvies_ she's calling them now, and Sam stares into the dark and thinks how badly he wants to go back there, and how self-centered he feels for his reasons.

"We're actually the only ones from the group still married," he points out, hesitating but deliberate. He instantly realizes it's not the greatest test to pull right now, when they're not really in private. For one thing, the first voice he hears calling back on the radio is Hot Dog, oblivious and jovial. _"There's a bet nobody made!"_ But he wants something, anything.... or what he mostly wants is no reaction at all. He wants the words to sound natural, common sense, and for the conversation to move on without a hint in Kara's voice of rejecting this premise: that they are still married, at least until the tattoos come off and their vows are undone. Before the Demetrius he'd never questioned it. Everything they'd been through, whatever they'd become, there was still an _us_ there, still a promise to return to each other. Now, who even knew? The zombie and the Cylon. And the stuff she said to him in between, all hurtful and past-tense, like her reasons for saying "Let's get married" and "Right now" were a world ago and two different people.

It's been a year and a half since New Caprica. It's another mark they crossed: separated longer than they were married now.

 _Are we?_ Kara responds. Then just as casually, _What about Tobias and Rachel?_ It's not much of anything, but it feels like enough, the blithe understanding they're not in That conversation yet, and he breathes. They are winning.


End file.
